


An Unrelenting Force

by asmodeusyne



Series: The Vinculum Wars [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: F/M, Kylo Ren - Freeform, Rey - Freeform, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 23:37:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13512144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmodeusyne/pseuds/asmodeusyne
Summary: “You are welcome to try and turn me. I want you to try, remember? I want you to break yourself trying.”“Meanwhile you hunt and kill my friends.”“Ideally."--Prologue toThe Vinculum WarsKylo Ren discovers his connection to Rey is more than just a bond. He pursues her to try and convince her to join him to consolidate their power. She believes that she can help him recover his goodness. She decides to risk getting closer to him to try and convince him to leave the darkness behind, unprepared for the cost.





	1. The Bond

“This is something else.”

Rey sat bolt upright in her bunk, scooting back on her hands as Kylo Ren loomed over her. Her head knocked against the bulkhead and it took her a heartbeat of rubbing the pain away before she realized he was not really there. Well, he was, but he wasn’t. He was, as he said, something else.

“Can you see where I am?” she demanded, resisting the urge to seize her lightsabre and cut him down.

“No,” he said, raising a hand as though to indicate his inability to make contact with her surroundings. “I see you where I am, aboard my flagship. You, I imagine, see me where you are, aboard that pestilential piece of junk.”

“For all you know,” she snapped. She was disconcerted. The last time he had done this, his brow was pricked with sweat, his eyes haunted with uncertainty. It had evidently passed, for he was sleek, pale, trimmed in that starless black.

“I know,” he replied, his smile faint, his eyes lit with predatory interest.

“Leave me alone,” she spat at him. “I gave you my answer.”

He, or his projected self, moved closer. “You didn’t, actually. You tried to kill me, but you didn’t quite refuse me.”

Rey wanted to kill him now, but the Force that bound them didn’t permit anything but their touch to bridge the distance. No blaster or lightsaber would reach him, only their beings. She considered punching him.

He held up a hand. “Let’s speak somewhere more neutral.”

She was overcome with a sense of vertigo as her surroundings suddenly displaced themselves. Each object and each surface on it suddenly stretched and pulled apart. She struggled to her feet and watched as all of her cargo, her blaster rack and the steel ammunition boxes she was transporting altered suddenly into something midway between liquid and dust. It leaked through the cabin grille, and then the floor too evaporated. The ship’s bulkhead formed a hole, and it too began to dissolve at the edges. She was spilled out into the darkness.

She opened her mouth to scream, then choked on it as the darkness rolled back to reveal— what? She blinked.

It was a desert, darkling but somehow familiar. There were tents that reminded her of tents she had seen all her days, again not quite right. It was as though she were misremembering the whole picture in spite of being convinced of the details. The two moons over head provided enough light to see the blue-roan colour of the sand, and that itself at least was accurate.

“It isn’t perfect,” said a voice from behind her, mechanized but still somehow cloyingly human.

Rey nearly jumped out of her skin as the darkness expelled Kylo Ren, masked and arrayed for battle. She just stopped herself from falling back on her ass, and shook herself. He wasn’t there. They weren’t here. She was alone in her cabin.

He touched the catch on the sides of his mask. The broad nasal detached itself from his face, and he lifted it off, shaking out his mane of black hair.

“I apologize if I frightened you.”

“You want people to be frightened of you,” she pointed out.

“Yes.” He hefted the mask and turned it to face him, his eyes staring down into its oil slick gaze. “It’s all vanity, in the end.”

The mask dissolved into fine black sand and evaporated before it could mix in the coarser sand at their feet.

“Why can’t I do that?” she wondered, half envious, half apprehensive. “Why is this still happening? I thought Snoke-”

“Snoke exploited the connection. He didn’t create it.” he said evenly, beckoning her to follow him. “Skywalker never taught you how to use it. I imagine he discouraged you from exploring it at all.”

“He had reasons,” she muttered to herself as she followed behind him like a child following a long, black shadow.

“And now he’s gone. Can you feel it? Everything is cleaner without his sadness, and regret.”

She decided to ignore that. Instead, she doubled her pace to catch up to him. “Have you been on Jakku before?”

“Yes. Look.”

They crested the dune, and now Rey could see clearly what he was leading her towards. The circle of tents was abandoned, lamps still burning, flags still fluttering in the wind. Rey followed his hand as gestured to the distance. There, another dark figure of surpassing height and menace stood before a prisoner. The red lightsaber tore through the air and cut the man down just as she realized his identity.

“You were the one who murdered Lor San Tekka!” she accused, turning on him.

“Yes.” He seemed disinterested in her anger.

Even as they looked on, the scene, the stormtroopers, the screaming people all vanished. He walked on, his boots leaving imprints in the sand that dematerialized after a few paces. Face burning, Rey followed him down into the circle of tents. Most of them open to the cool night air, they circled around a blazing bonfire. The dominant structure was raised high as any palace, and was supplied with rugs, beds, jars of water, jars of exotic wines from offworld, and proliferation of glowing lamps.

She would have thought him completely out of place in this home spun, candlelit world, but somehow it made space for him. Then again, he was drawing on his memory and shaping it to conform to his wishes, so perhaps that wasn’t really that surprising. He looked into the fire, and she looked into him, trying to see past the glittering eyes, the hard expression, but he was giving away nothing. The smile that twisted his generous mouth also pulled at his scar, giving his face a feral aspect that frightened her, but also drew her in a way she was afraid to understand.

“I didn’t bring you here to reminisce about tedious little holy men,” he said as he put off his cloak, went into the tent and draped it over a chair. Underneath he wore an exceedingly simple doublet, quilted and cut to his measure. Tailored black breeches, spit shined black boots, it was all real enough, but it was _of_ him, not on him. She wondered what his corporeal body was doing right now, and had to remind herself that in despite everything her senses told her, they simply were not anywhere.

“Why did you bring me here?” she demanded. “It’s about time you told me.”

He sat down, or more accurately, draped himself over one of the chairs. “Partly to see if it was possible. Your teacher left your defenses very penetrable to psychic interference, and I wanted to see how far it could be exploited.”

She advanced on him, tempted to see if she could break something over his head, though she knew it wasn’t possible.

“Have you satisfied your curiosity?”

“Partly.”

“What else?”

Lazily, he lifted his hand and beckoned in a deliberate curl of his black gloved finger. Rey felt her lower back arch and let out a small cry as she was lifted off her feet, and dragged bodily through the air towards him.

“Fight me,” he said. “I want you to show me.”

But she couldn’t. The natural current that was so easy to reach into when she was in her own haunts was eluding her now. She couldn’t budge his grip, nor manipulate the objects around her.

“Why can’t I hurt you? Why can you do this, but I can’t?”

“Discipline,” he said, releasing her so that she landed on her knees before him. “Luke Skywalker was always very convinced that exposure to the Darkness was itself an invitation, but I think he did you an unkindness by leaving you so weak, Rey.”

She rose up to her feet and stared down at him. “Don’t talk about Master Luke. You of all-”  
  
He stopped her, laying one black finger over her mouth. “Then we won’t. But it will take you a long time to learn, without a teacher.”

She stood, quivering suddenly at the shock of his touch on her lips. Even gloved, it was disturbingly textured, supple, and smelling of brushed steel.

“Interesting,” he said, though his tone suggested this observation was something far more indecent than the word. “It seems my other hypothesis was correct.”

“What hypothesis?”

Slowly, deliberately, Kylo Ren stripped off his black gloves, and laid them on the table beside him. Then, surging forward like a striking cobra, he seized her around the throat and lifted her off her feet. His fingers choked off the scream that was trying to escape from her, and battered it into silence as he slammed her back against the nearest of the fur-laden beds. She clawed at his hand and fingers, looking hatefully up at him as he grinned viciously.

“This hypothesis. That given enough time and focus, that your mind would fully commit to an interaction- that I might affect you physically, even at a galaxy’s remove.”

She struggled, but now the weight of his torso pressed her down. Her heart raced, she could feel it thumping against her ribs as she tried to push back with the Force. It was no good. She could only look daggers at him until he gave a lithe little chuckle, and loosened his grip.

She lay back, fighting to get her breath, and glared at him. “So kill me. You’re so strong, Kylo Ren, why don’t you show me?”

He bit his lip for a moment, a little dent appearing between his brows for all the world as though he was considering it. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, expecting to feel the weight of his fingers on her throat, but it didn’t come. Instead, a softness on her lips, an incredibly lifelike facsimile of his generous mouth, their infinitesimal lines, the seam of warm wetness between his lips.

The sensation was every bit as intense as the violence of his iron grip, but Rey found herself even more defenseless. When her mouth opened for him she knew she was lost. Images of him, stripped to the waist flashed behind her eyes, and whatever that little spark of desire had been then, her denial of it might as well be dry tinder. His tongue dipped and then plunged into her mouth, mapping it greedily. Her hands went up to touch him, searching out the soft black quilts of his doublet but finding only his flesh.

“You’re learning already,” he said as he broke the kiss and looked down to see the doublet melting away like black sand, the same way the mask had.

“I suppose it’s easy when it’s something _you_ already want,” she said wryly. Then she reached up to touch him, her fingers finding the scars on his torso, the places where her blade had bit into him. His breath caught as she touched the slash in his side.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she said, almost unaware of her words as she traced the topography of his chest with her fingers. “Ben…”

He took her face in his hand and turned it to his. “It’s just us. Don’t mourn for someone you never knew.”

She wanted to speak, to press him, to force him to make some kind of admission, but just as strong was his resolve to bury it. He felt so real, his mouth so warm and human that it was turning her thoughts. To look at him she would have though his flesh as cool as marble. His cheeks were flushed.

“If I thought I could reach you,” she murmured, staring up into his eyes.

He slid a hand into her hair, pulling back her head so that he could lick a hot wet line up her throat. “I really want you to try, Rey. I want you to do everything in your power to help return me to the light. I want to watch you try to reform me, and I will be there to comfort you in your failure.”

Rey stared at him, then reached out and slapped him across the face. It wasn’t the solid blow she had been trying for, but it did snap his head to the side. He was slow to turn to her, the lividity of her hand’s imprint disappearing slowly from his pale cheek.

“What,” she mocked. “Do you think you can turn me?”

“You’re afraid,” he said softly. “You’re afraid that once you give in just a little, you’ll never want to stop.”

“Never,” she hissed. “I will never.”

He stroked her face. “Then you, my dear, need a new plan. Either one of us surrenders, or one of us dies. I want to live. Don’t you?”

She stared at him, right into his large, expressive brown eyes. The weight of his body was starting to feel comfortable, and more than comfortable. It took her less than a second to realize that she wanted him so badly that she might die if she didn't have him.

"This," she whispered, as though whispering might take the shame from it. "Never happened."

“It isn’t happening now.”

He kissed her forehead, his hands working under her ratty sleeping shift to cup her breasts. He tore it away easily, laying her bare.

She shivered as his cool palms raised her nipples, and shivered again as his head bent down, his mouth catching one, teeth teasing her until she gasped. Something inside her snapped open, like a catch in the Force. She could reach for it now, she realized, but it was compelling her closer to him, all the molecules in her body vibrating with the need to bridge the connection.

Then she was clawing at him, catching her feet at his waist band and using them to shove them down around his calves.

“Ah!” He cried out as her nails scored his back, as her teeth bit down on his lower lip.

He threw her back, knocking the wind out of her. Then his mouth closed over hers, blood from his lip staining her face. Up on his knees, he grabbed her thighs, pulling her on to her back. Bare before her, rows of muscle laced with cauterized scars, he was delicious to look at. His cock stood out from him from a thatch of dark hair, curved upwards and thick enough that she wouldn’t be able to fit her whole hand around it. Even so, she tried, leaning up to grasp him in such a way that she could see his abdomen contract.

She hadn’t done this much, maybe two or three times as a teenager on the real Jakku, but she remembered that part. His eyes went out of focus as she moved her hand, sheathing him in her touch as she stroked him. His hips flexed inwards and he pushed himself into her grasp, exhaling through clenched teeth. A tiny bead of liquid appeared at the head of his cock, and she suddenly felt the urge to lick it off.

He stopped her before she could, pushing her down with his forearm. He leaned into her, looking directly into her eyes as his hand found her, stroking down her belly until it touched the edge of her wetness. The rhythm of her hand on his cock flagged as he used his fingers to unfold her, open her to the cool air. When he moved her hand away from his cock she didn’t protest, so lost was she to the feeling of him touching her so intimately, sending currents of electricity across her nerves.

When his thumb moved up to apply pressure on her clit, Rey couldn’t stand it anymore. All righteous thoughts had fled her completely. She tightened her fingers in his hair, stared up at him with the same abject fear she had felt upon first meeting him in his interrogation chamber. But what she wanted had changed.

“Kylo...”

His eyes went molten, and his lips parted. She arched as he brushed a knuckle across her.

“Come on, Rey.”

“Please, Kylo,” she begged.

With a hiss of breath, he pulled her hips to his, sliding his cock into her with one hard stroke. Her cry was cut short when his mouth caught hers, swallowing up the sound, and his hands followed the contour of her back as she arched, driving her hips against it.

She clung to him, each thrust rippling through her, his pubic hair scraping roughly against her skin. His hands wandered her body, one settling at the small of her back, the other one palming her breast, fingertips leaving bruises.

“You’re so perfect, Rey.” His breath was hot in her ear. “Shining warrior. Do you know how good you feel.”

She didn’t want his words. She didn’t want him to remind her how weak she was, how easy to seduce. She just wanted him to take the doubts away.

“Shut up and fuck me,” she snapped.

He laughed, and then he obliged, ramming into her with all he had. She twisted, hemmed in by his body and armes. The feeling that had been building where his body joined to hers started to overflow, spasming up through her belly and down her thighs. She moaned, gasping for breath as the orgasm mutated, expanded, enhanced with each thrust of his cock and the pressure of his pubic bone on hers.

His pace slackened, becoming languid as he turned her face so that he could apply kisses, soft at first, but full of teeth by the time his mouth met the flesh under the angle of her jaw. His hands traveled her back, fingertips performing an inventory of all her slender musculature. Suddenly a rush of air coursed over her skin, and she realized dimly that there were six inches of empty space between the two of them and the bed.

She clung to him, forgetting that she would not fall, and whimpered as another orgasm lit through her. Her muscles contracted around his cock, and it was enough to finally bring him. His groan was almost a sob. His lower body tensed, twitched, and he sprawled across her, burying his face in her hair.

Gently, he stroked it away from her face as they lowered back down into the bed. He kissed her where he’d bitten her, also gently, but to remind her of his violence. Above all, she felt it churning inside him, and it terrified her. Before, she’d been afraid, and now she was aroused.

“You belong with me,” he murmured. “If you stand against me, I won’t spare you. But it need never come to that if you join me.”

She closed her eyes, not wanting to shift his warm arms from around her, not wanting to face that desert place alone.

“I will fight you,” she said in a small voice. “I will defeat you.”

Everything went dark. The air that had been cool was now metallic and close. She lay on her back across her bunk, in the clicking, rattling semi-darkness of the _Millennium Falcon’s_   squalid stateroom. She was covered with sweat from head to foot, and sticky between the thighs.

“Will you kill me?” asked that voice, the masked voice. He stood before her, alien to this place, his black cowl, and black gloves performing the dual task of frightening her and saddening her that the supple darkness armoured him from her touch.  
  
She rose and approached him, laying hands on his chest. He felt machine hard beneath, and a thought struck her, a truly frightening thought, before she remembered that he was flesh. She looked up at him, fierce with resolve.

“If I have to. I won’t ever give in. I will bring you back one way or another.”

He stared at her, the faceless mask, the soulless eyes full of nothing but void. “Will you absolve me, Rey? All the murders I’ve committed? All the people you care about?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “When you ask for my forgiveness, I will know if I can give it.”

He lifted his gloved hand to her face and stroked his thumb over her cheek. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

He disappeared, slowly, his black body dissolving into black sand the way that the Force manifested objects had done in his projected Jakku. She went back to her bunk, spent and psychically bruised, and lay on her back. When she was sure he was gone, she let the tears roll back across her temples and into her hair, not sure why she was weeping.

_Don’t cry, Rey. We’ll see eachother again soon._


	2. The Armistice

“That it?”

“That’s it.”

Poe Dameron piloted the shuttle, banking lazily as he looked for a place to set down. Rey pointed to a place between the rocks. She knew the island, could even see the furrows in the ground where the landing struts of the _Falcon_ had rested. It hadn’t been that long, so the grass growing in them was still fine and pale.

“You’re sure about this, kid?” Poe asked. “If they find you out here I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to you in time. We’re a long way from anywhere. ”

“Without the _Falcon_ or a sign of Resistance livery, they won’t have any reason to look.”

“You find what you’re looking for, you let us know and I’ll come back to get you.”

“It could be some time. Don’t worry, Poe. I can take care of myself.”

He nodded, and then fired up the engines. In another moment, the shuttle was just a dim outline in the low hanging clouds. A minute more, and it was gone. Rey hoisted her rucksack over her shoulder, and headed up the wet stones, nudging a porg aside with her foot as she went.

The caretakers appeared to have fled the place, but the mounds were not much worse for wear. After setting down her things, Rey’s first order of business was to find Luke Skywalker’s remains and see to them with dignity. But then, of course, there was nothing except the empty robes, plastered to the side of a wet rock. She gathered them up, considered looking for the mechanical hand but decided against it, then went to raid the woodpile.

There were very few trees on the island so wood was precious. She wasn’t burning a body, so the pyre wasn’t very large, but she knew she would have to endure some cold nights if she was to find what she was looking for. She huddled close to the blaze and watched as the fire took the wet fabric, steaming it before finally consuming it. She shivered as a chill breeze blew across her shoulders.

“It’s warmer aboard my ship.”

The voice made her jump almost a foot in the air. She had her feet under her and her repaired lightsaber drawn in an instant. Kylo Ren was leaning against the outside of the mounds, black clad from head to heel, his arms crossed.

“You’re not really here,” she accused, and then looked out at the horizon where the last of the daylight was dying. The Upsilon-class shuttle was unmistakable even in silhouette. It was at least two miles distant. Alarmed, she looked around for storm troopers, reinforcements, but there was no sign.

“Just me,” Kylo Ren said, as though he was harmless. “I wondered when you’d return to this place.”

“Why did you wonder?” she said, moving around the fire and keeping the wall at her back.

“I’m not here to fight,” he said. “You can put that away.”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “If you’re not here to fight, then you should be off. Go. Leave.”

He pulled his lightsaber out of his holster and tossed it at her feet. “Happy?”

She looked down at it, nudged it with her toe, and pushed it aside. Then she turned off her lightsaber and holstered it. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” he said, pacing around the flames until he was a foot away from her. “We have a problem, between the two of us.”

She stiffened. “You mean like how you mind-raped me in that desert vision."

He looked at her then, his stare both penetrating and intimate. “That wasn’t how you felt about it at the time.”

She sucked her lower lip, unwilling to give voice to any more thoughts on that matter. Instead she looked out to the horizon, but the sun was gone, and so too was the shadow of his ship.

“It’s called a Vinculum,” he said abruptly.

She blinked at him. “a what?”

“A Vinculum- or _the_ Vinculum. In the literature of the Force, a Vinculum is a tie between souls that transcends and penetrates through time and space. There isn’t a great deal more that’s known about it because the last recorded Vinculum was hundreds of years ago.”

“How do you know this?” she demanded.

"Read the books you stole. It’s there. It took me some time to recall where I’d first heard of Force bonds as strong as ours.”

She watched him through narrowed eyes. He in turn watched the last fragments of the Jedi robes as they disintegrated. Then he stripped off his gloves so that he could hold his hands to the fire. As she watched him, it struck her that she had never touched him. She had never felt his mouth on hers, nor his hands on her body and she wondered if maybe that was as good as saying it had never happened.

“I know what you want,” she said. “The answer is still no.”

“And I know what you want, Rey,” he replied, mocking her with his half smile. “You are welcome to try and turn me. I want you to try, remember? I want you to break yourself trying.”

“Meanwhile, you hunt and kill my friends.”

“Ideally."

“How did you even find me? What exactly do you expect from this…” she struggled for the word.

“Fraternization?” He considered this. “I want for you to join me. I want for you to turn your back on this little experiment and realize your full potential. You’re still in need of a teacher, Rey. Even you have to admit it. You need me to defeat me.”

She looked hard at him. He had something planned, but a full force invasion of one tiny island on one tiny planet out in the back end of nowhere wasn’t it.

“Get rid of that thing.” She pointed at the Upsilon. “Then I’ll give you three days.”

He reached for down to his belt and came up with a small cylindrical communicator. Watching her with disconcerting intensity, he pressed the switch.

“Take the ship up into orbit, and remain there until I summon you.”

It made an indistinct beeping noise, and in the distance Rey could hear the rumble of engines. Lights came alive on the Upsilon’s flank stabilizers, and they deployed as it rose. Rey watched it ascend through low bellied clouds, and waited until all trace of it had gone.

Kylo Ren used the Force to retrieve his lightsaber, and holstered it. Then he fixed his predatory not-quite-smile on her. “Three days.”

“Starting today,” she challenged.

“Starting at dawn.”

“That’s three days and a night,” she countered. “Not what we agreed.”

“Then we won’t count tonight.” He turned his back on her and made his way into the shelter of the peaks.

Unable to come up with an adequate response, Rey followed after him, thumbing the lightsaber in her belt. In the east, storm clouds were brewing.


	3. Just Chaos

Kylo Ren seemed disturbingly familiar with Temple Island, and it dawned on Rey that he had landed before she and Poe had even entered Ahch-To’s atmosphere. He must have used the time to case the island and its ruins, for he led her straight to the Jedi sanctuary. There she found the makings of a simple meal, two square chairs and a pile of sleeping furs. The mosaic pool, she saw with annoyance, was empty of water and now filled with firewood.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

Kylo Ren’s face was unreadable as he shrugged off his cowl. He twitched his head to the side, and the wood burst into flames so intense that Rey felt the heat through her clothes. Started, she took a retreating step.

“Where did you learn that?” she demanded. “How is it possible to make fire?”

“I didn’t make fire,” he said patiently, beckoning her over to the chairs. “I simply organized all of the conditions. It’s all about applying the Force to each element with perfect synchronicity. The fuel, the oxygen, the spark.”

Rey couldn’t help herself. “Teach me.”

“No,” he said, licking his lips, his dark eyes shining with the firelight. “If you really are the prodigy that the Jedi have said that you are, you won’t need instruction, only practice.”

Frowning, she followed him over and sat down, turning her eyes to the flames.

“Tell me what you know of the Force,” he said softly. She looked at him, startled by his choice of words. Had he plucked Luke’s same words from her mind?

She took a deep breath. “The Force is energy. It is life, and death, and cyclical. It is light and dark, love and hate, chaos and balance.”

“I can see why you might think so,” he said, again that ghost of a smile. “The truth is far simpler, and yet more complex. The Force is a consciousness that is generated by all living beings. It does not govern, nor does it concern itself with our petty morality. What it does is covet.”

She frowned deeply. “What do you mean, it covets?”

“It covets us. It covets and envies conscious beings made of matter. It is especially attracted to individuals sensitive to its presence. It wants, above all, our attention.”

That didn't seem right to her at all, but the instant he said it, she realized it was undeniable. Was this the thing Luke had been trying to tell her?

“Why did it create this bond between us?”

“I do not know precisely,” he admitted. “I believe it is because we two are the most Force- receptive beings in the galaxy. Perhaps there are others on worlds we have yet to discover who also share these bonds, but for all we know the Force has generated so strong a bond between the two of us because it has no other conduit.”

“So you don’t believe in balance,” she murmured. “You don’t believe any of it. Then why align yourself with the darkness?”

“The concept is just a simplification,” he said dismissively. “The Force is neither light, nor dark, nor is it concerned with our conventions. The Darkness is just a philosophy that states all things are permissible in pursuit of an objective. If the goal is worthy, the means are not important.”

“That is an absurd contradiction,” she snapped. “You know it.”

He grinned. “Of course it is. But the Dark Side endows its followers with more than the trappings of power. There is...a heritage that rewards ambition, discipline, order, focus.”

She felt a little sick. “Ruthlessness, destruction, hate.”

He didn’t seem troubled. “It looks like that to you. The side of the Light is endowed with heritage also, the Jedi order, fabricator of the virtuous balance. It’s a very convenient mandate for an order who advocate harm in defense of it. The Jedi are hypocrites.”

“Are you saying the Force is just chaos?”

“The Force is, I believe, childlike. It feeds on our attention, and in so doing reveals itself to the perceptive, allowing us to use it to telekinetically and psychically manipulate the physical. The more we follow its base intention, the greater access we then have to its potential.”

She rose from her chair, hand going unconsciously to her holster. “That’s why you’re pursuing this bond between us. You think it will enhance your power.”

He did not rise, but looked up at her in that intense, unblinking way. “You agreed to submit to my tutelage in pursuit of the very same object.”

“Unwillingly.”

Kylo Ren looked up at her, frowning slightly — then she felt it, like a feather across the back of her neck. He’d sifted her thoughts as easily as though she had spoken them.

“Get out of my head!” she snarled, more frightened than before. Why was it so easy for him? She’d fought him off in the past without any training whatever.

“To answer your questions- I believe the bond has linked us telepathically to a far greater degree. I haven’t overtly threatened you, so your guard is down.”

“Don’t do that again,” she warned, shaken.

“As for your other concern, the one you bury deep beside the anger at your parents for abandoning you, and the fear that you will fail and disappoint all of your new friends…”

“Stop,” she demanded, backing away, her voice almost a sob.

He rose, and stood before her, a shadow punched out of the flickering light. “That deep down, you are hurt that my pursuit of you is, you believe, the action of a selfish desire to consolidate my power, and not the result any personal concern. Is that correct?”

“Call your ship,” she said, pointing in the vague direction where it had been. “I want you to leave.”

He ignored that, and approached, closing the distance between them. His height was imposing, and his closeness confused her, distracted her. He reached out and touched her face, just the merest stroke of his fingertips. She stood shaking, wanting to attack him, wanting to...wanting to…

“Raise your hand like so,” he instructed. “It’s not strictly necessary but it helps to channel the Force.”

Trembling, she did as she was bid, and reached for his face without quite touching it. The flow of his thoughts suddenly washed over her, far more easily than when she’d pried his fears from him weeks ago. It was indistinct at first, flashes of his family, his mother and father arguing.

_He scares the other kids. Leia, I have to be honest with you, he scares me._

_What do you want me to do? He’s only a boy._

Then another fragment, this one more distinct.

_You don’t want to teach me anything! I have all of this power, but you tell me I’m not allowed to use it. I can read minds, but you say that it’s bad-_

_We’ve been over this, Ben._

_What if I learn something important? What if somebody did something wrong and I’m the only one who can find out for sure?_

_It’s not in keeping with the Force. There are things you can’t control, and you must learn to accept that._

Then:

_Your people have been following me for days. What do you want with me?_

_Skywalker is holding you back. Suppressing your potential. I can teach you all that you wish to know. I can show you the truth about Darth Vader._

Now she wanted to stop. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to see. He wrapped a hand around her wrist and held her in place, giving her more.

_Will you help me?_

_Anything._

_Atone, father. For trying to reduce me, shame me and control me. For sending me away for repairs. For fearing me more than you ever loved me._

“Stop,” she whispered. “Ben.”

His grip on her wrist tightened. His expression turned, his eyes closing, his brow furrowing. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. She too was sweating, shivering with the chill breeze that cut across the fire.

_She is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. She is so desperate to please, so anxious to be of use. Her raw power rivals my own._

_It is almost as though you feel for this girl, Kylo Ren._

_I am merely stating a-_

_She is a threat. She has defeated you twice, both times with the Force. You must bring her to heel, or put an end to her. There is no middle way._

_Yes, master._

Suddenly she was shocked by a series of unintelligible emotions. Rejection, aspiration, rage, longing, desire. Loneliness. Desperate loneliness. No partner, nor friend to take counsel or protect his back.

_Yes. You can’t know what an unworthy prize this command is with no one to share it._

He released her hand, and she drew back, panting, breast heaving. She wanted to throw his words back in his face, but something about his raw emotion was impossible to scorn. She saw his tragedy, and saw the impossibility of his dilemma.

“To love you,” he said calmly, thumbing away his own tears before they fell. “Is to admit defeat. I am a killer who murders my closest kin so that I may stay pure and undistracted. So that my pristine mind will give me the deepest possible connection with the Force. I can only ever achieve that by destroying my need for love and connection.”

“Why is that defeat?” she demanded, wiping her own tears away. “Why don’t you kill me now, if it’s so-”

“Because the Force connects us, strengthens us. Together we are far more powerful than we are apart.”

“Then put an end to this vicious cycle,” she said firmly. “I can help you.”

“Can you?” his voice was full of beseeching anger. “Will you absolve me of all I’ve done? You are the only woman living I can have any regard for at all without compromising my potential.”

She shook her head. “Even if I wanted to, it’s not up to me to absolve you.”

He brushed her off with a wave of his hand, stalked around the fire pit, and collapsed into his chair, pulling his collar open to vent his overheated throat.

“This impasse is a danger to both of us," he told her. "Either you submit to my wishes, join me in my world- or I put my neck in your noose, and die to redeem myself.”

“I won’t.” She swallowed. “I won’t execute you. Your mother-”

“My mother,” he laughed. “Will try to comfort me from outside my cage. Even she won’t try to prevent her followers from revenging themselves on me.”

“If I answer for you,” she said desperately. “They will respect whatever I decide.”

He looked straight at her, and laughed. It was weak, and full of sadness. “Rey, you join me, or you die. I join you, or I die- if I join you I may die anyway, whether I am murdered in my sleep or shot down in front of a wall.”

“I would never let that happen.” She didn’t know what else to say. That she wanted to rescue him, but could never love a murderer?

“No. It won’t.” He brushed sweat away from his forehead and flung it into the fire, where it sizzled. “Because I will die before I give up what I have built.”

She stared at him, at a loss for words. She wanted to say yes, I will, I’ll protect you and I’ll give myself to you if you just let go, but she knew that for a false promise. But as that realization settled heavily over, she also felt him silently pleading for him to end his agony. And it was also true that every part of that need was Ben Solo, the boy, the poor deluded young man who wanted to be great, convinced himself he did not need anyone’s love because he truly believed that his mother and father sent him away because he was unworthy of it.

She saw then the path through his darkness. She resolved to walk it, trusting herself to find the way and not get lost in his web.

In three quick steps Rey closed in on him, and before he could speak or stand, she took his face in her hands and tilted his head back, crushing her mouth to his. In his shock, he pulled back from her, looking up with wide brown eyes that were equal parts hope, suspicion, anger. Then he pulled her down for another kiss, only there was violence in his, the promise of brutality and pain.

She wanted it, she realized. In admitting her power to hurt him, she saw the distant but approaching possibility that his invitation might prove too tempting. Because she too felt hate, and she could feel its power. He knew it. He knew how to alchemize those things into corruption. Hate was of the Darkness, and the Darkness was inside her anger. The sadness was not enough to temper it. Still, she had to take the risk.

As his tongue slid up into her mouth, and his hands travelled her back, it occurred to her that this realization was a confluence of thoughts. She hadn’t considered how intimate it would be, to see the facets of his reasoning, to feel him perusing her fears. It was both incredibly uncomfortable, yet strangely intoxicating.

He pulled her closer, those long, strong hands running down her flanks to her hips. She straddled him, her hands resting on his chest. She focused, feeling a little cord of tension behind her eyes, and used the Force to pull apart the stays of his doublet. He looked on in approval, and shrugged out of it, taking her hands and placing them on his bare skin.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered as she traced the lines of his musculature, fingers finding the scarred, gnarled dent where the Chewie had blasted him, moving up to the scar on his arm. With her other hand, she drew her thumb along the scar on his face.

_We should. I can feel the hollowness inside of you. I can give you what you need._

She didn’t answer. Suddenly he surged up, his mouth full on hers, devouring at hers as his hands made short work of her vest, her tunic. Her breasts tumbled out, and he filled his hands with them, gentle at first. He caught one nipple between his fore and middle finger, applying enough pressure to make her hiss in breath. Then he lifted her, capturing the other breast in his mouth.

He sucked at it, tongue swirling around it, teeth teasing it. He sucked the whole areola into his mouth, then bit down hard enough to inflict an angry red mark. She cried out, but felt herself becoming more aroused every second. She could feel his cock through his black breaches. He arched up to grind his hips against hers, moving his painful kisses to the inside of her breast where the curve was fullest. He marked her there as well, sinking his teeth in so deeply it was just shy of breaking the skin. She could feel from him that he didn’t care if he did break the skin. The desire to scar her, to mark her permanently, quivered inside him. But he held back.

_Let me in. End my suffering, my isolation._

She did not know if the thought was his, or her own. His hands slid under her own careworn suede pants, one hand cupping her ass, the other sliding between her legs, running smoothly on the slick wetness that was threatening to overflow from her. He used two fingertips to test her, to tease open the folds of her cunt. Then, agonizingly slowly, he slid them inside of her. Her involuntary moan was swallowed as his mouth caught hers. Her interior muscles, so delicate and yet so strong, gripped his fingers as he moved them slowly up into her.

She rocked against his hand, his other hand moving down to her ass, stabilizing her. She balanced herself by holding his shoulders. She wanted to unsheath his cock and ride it, but she didn’t want him to stop doing what he was doing with his fingers. Sensing this, he closed his eyes and focused. She felt it, felt tiny disturbances, separations, and realized what he was doing. He was using the Force to expand the distance between the molecules that made up her sturdy suede pants. In a second, they slipped off her body and fell to the floor, leaving her bare for his attentions. More sweat appeared on his upper lip, but his expression was satisfaction.

She reached down and pulled open the laces of his breeches, tugging them down and freeing his cock. He groaned, unable to stop himself, unable to do more than obey the needs of his body. He withdrew his fingers from her, put both hands on her ass and pulled her down on to him.

“Kylo,” she gasped as he slid into her, his girth pushing her tensed muscles apart, penetrating her so deeply that she felt pressure deep in her belly. His wide eyes stared up at her, lips parted. All of his control, his carefully mortared discipline was gone from him. He stood, lifting her with him, never breaking the penetration, and tumbled them both down on to the furs.

“Tell me what you need, Rey,” he hissed in her ear, biting it and then kissing it.

She shuddered, barely able to force out the words. “Don’t hold back.”

He seized both her hands and pinned them above her head. His mouth turned into a snarl as he undulated his hips, using his core muscles to drive harder and faster into her. She wanted to scream, but his mouth covered hers, tongue filling it and preventing her from making any sound but crushed whimpers. She wrapped her legs around him, arching to take him better, deeper.

_So close, Rey. I want you to come for me. Do it now._

Her body obeyed the command of his mind, and she came with a harsh scream that echoed up inside the sanctuary. She felt him coming with her, felt what he felt as he came, experiencing the almost painfully good sensation in his balls as he let go inside of her. He in turn, she knew, could feel her release, the thundering waves of now tensing, now slackening of the muscles inside of her, in her belly and thighs, even down to her toes. And then the wash of everything from her mind but the far distant thought that he might kill her, and how delicious it would be to die in the purity of this emptiness.

He did not kill her. For an infinitesimal second he was tempted, but it subsided almost at once, and he kissed her mouth, her face, her throat.

“If you ask it of me, I will give you my protection,” he promised in his soft as silk voice, the one he had used in the interrogation chamber when he had tried and failed to coax her mind into giving up its secrets. The one that promised the most intimate of tortures.

 _I know better than to believe you_ , she thought, not entirely to herself. He did not reply, but subsided into exhaustion. She remained awake for a long time, drifting off only when the storm clouds broke open over their island, and cleansed the dense air with sheets of grey rain.

 


	4. Bitter Edges

Kylo Ren watched as dawn’s shrouded light crept across the floor of the sanctuary and climbed over the sleeping Rey. She was naked under the furs, deeply asleep, one arm thrown carelessly behind her. Everywhere on her body, she was marked with bruises, some corresponding in size and shape to his grip, some to his mouth and teeth.

The morning was still misty, so the light was not harsh enough to rouse her from sleep. He had considered doing so himself when he woke up hard and wanted her to satisfy him, but decided to put off that indulgence.

He narrowed his focus on her, mind reaching out to the borders of her consciousness.

_Wake up._

She shifted slightly, making a tiny mewling sound of protest as she covered her eyes with one arm. Annoyed, Kylo unholstered his lightsaber and ignited it, filling the chamber with the sound of sizzling, crackling electricity and painfully bright red light.

Rey was up in an instant, eyes wide with panic, heart thumping, shocked by the sudden cold on her skin. He saw into her fear as she pulled up the furs to cover herself, the realization that she was naked an unarmed, her enemy armored in black, weapon in hand. He felt her gut wrench as she thought she had woken up to her death.

Kylo deactivated his blade, and tucked it back into its holster. With an effortless gesture, he used the Force to toss her clothes at her feet.

“Get dressed,” he said. “Meet me on the eastern steps.”

\--

Perhaps in defiance of his orders, Rey appeared some fifteen minutes later, dressed in her worn-in old garb, her hair braided and pushed back from her face. She approached him warily, one hand on her lightsaber. He stood above her, the harsh angle of the steps increasing his elevation over her. All around them, dew clung to the grass, making for a slippery surface should either of them stray off the path.

“You didn’t need do that, you snake,” she spat at him. “It isn’t necessary to terrorize people to get what you want.”

He sneered at her. “But as you’ve pointed out, I enjoy terrorizing people.”

She wanted to pick a fight, he could tell, and he approved. He held up a hand to silence her.

“You beat me, once, by the grace of the Force. Do you think you can do it again?”

Pleased to have the opportunity to chastise him, she drew her lightsaber handle and held it ready. “Let’s find out.”

“Take this.” He tossed something to her, a strip of silver metal, soldered to make a ring.

“What’s this?” She turned it, looking closely at it.

“It’s a saber choke, one of my own design. It acts as a diffuser and reduces the power of the saber beam. The blade won’t cut, but it will burn. I find the in-line saber adjustment too...forgiving.”

“Afraid to face me with live blades?” she mocked.

“You beat me when I was weak and injured,” he replied, pulling out his own lightsaber handle, and putting the choke inside the emitter. “I know you to be a natural, and I saw a marked increase in your skill in the throne room. But the only time I intend to use live blades with you, Rey, is when I mean to take your life. Understand?”

She stood stubborn, wanting to challenge him, wanting to argue, but she couldn’t help but grudgingly admit the sense of it. She placed the choke in the emitter just as he had done, and ignited the saber. The blue of the beam was now paler, a little less saturated.

He fired up his own blade, which also lost a little of its colour, but very little of its crackle. He beckoned her with one hand, mocking her with a bow. She jumped the steps two at a time as she attempted to rush him, swinging her blade in a great arc that would have connected with his neck if he hadn’t battered her blade to the side. In response to this, he raised up for a straight vertical cut downwards, and she lifted her blade over her head, stopping his blade with a perpendicular block.

It was easy for him to disengage, and swipe her raised arm. She yelped with pain as the blow glanced of her skin, leaving a raw welt.

“Who taught you that?” he asked, still mocking. She frowned at him, rolling her shoulder as she tried to shake off the stinging pain.

“No one,” she admitted sulkily.

“Try it on me,” he told her. “Do as I did.”

She did, raising up to slash down. He blocked her with the same perpendicular stroke, only he rotated his wrist to the outside, forcing her blade down and positioning his own in an ideal place to strike her anywhere on her exposed body. Her blade was trapped on the outside of his.

“That’s a parry, with followthrough,” he informed her. “Didn’t Skywalker teach you anything?”

He knew full well Skywalker had given her no combat instruction whatever. Before she could come over top, he retreated backwards up the steps. Thinking this was a sign of weakness, she beat his blade away and went for a penetrating thrust. Inverting his lightsaber, he drew his arm across his face, angling blade straight up and down so that her blow glanced off it. He extended, frying the misty air as the point of his blade sizzled an inch from her face.

“Your technique is not equal to your heart,” he told her. “Temper your rage. Use it, do not let it use you.”

She grimaced, then nodded, then centered herself. She controlled her breathing and drew on the Force to guide her. He lunged, and she made the parry, shoving his blade to the side, then twisting at the waist to make an angle so that she could drive into him from the opposite side. He grunted as her blade cut against his chest, tearing through his doublet into his skin. He countered, pushing the blade so that her arm was pinned across her body, then struck low, catching her on the outside of the calf.

And so it went. Up and down the narrow stairs, blades flashing. Rey stopped more blows than not, but she would still come out with a full set of burn scars. Kylo Ren imagined later he would get to lick them while she winced, but that was a distracting thought and nearly cost him a new scar of his own to go with all the others.

Finally, exhausted and blown, Rey held up a hand for halt. She deactivated her lightsaber, and this mistake was so incredible that it took his breath away. The instant she did this, he held up his hand and snatched the air. Her weapon jerked away from her. He caught it and activated it in the same instant. He levelled the two weapons at her, and she backed away.

“You cheater!” she shouted at him, scraping back the fine hairs plastered to her sweaty forehead with her fingers.

“Two lessons.” He stroked the blades against each other, making them whine and spark in protest. “One, never let your guard down. Two...do whatever it takes to win.”

After he deactivated them both, and even after he holstered his own, she was slow to reach for hers when he offered it to her. The apprehension in her eyes pleased him. She was learning.

\--

As he surveyed the island, Kylo Ren understood more and more why the Jedi had made their seat here. Even putting aside Ahch-To’s remoteness, and the island’s defensible terrain, he believed it was the hot spring that drew the Jedi to settle here. A natural vent that heated a pool, deep underneath the place where the Jedi Tree had stood. Its entrance was bounded by surf, so getting to it had taken some skill. He scaled the rock face part of the way down, then used the Force to slow his descent.

He landed easily on the wet rock platform, and made his way into the cave. It was dark, but there was some oil in the lamp that hung overhead. He ignited it easily, and examined the structure. The Jedi ancients had expanded the room, creating a perfectly square pool with descending steps on all four sides. It went deep enough that even a man of his considerable height could submerge himself, and was wide enough to accomodate a few strokes.

He stripped off his clothes and left them by the door. The wound on his chest was sensitive to the damp air, and it would sting when the hot water touched it, but he didn’t care. He descended into the hot water, gasping as the temperature change made his skin crawl pleasurably. He had not been wrong about the wound- it did sting as the hard water washed over it, but that sensation passed after a moment or two. He ducked under once, slicking his hair back, then lay back against the wall with a small sigh of satisfaction.

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this content. He knew it was only a respite, but he wanted to believe...no, it was better not to dwell on it. He had left Rey sulking, but now he wanted her, and he told her in the vague terms of his own rumination. She sought for him, unaware of his location.

_Follow my path. Feel for the steps, the handholds._

It was twenty minutes later when she finally appeared, windswept, at the doorway. “What is this place?”

“Come and see.”

She stepped into the chamber, her eyes catching him, taking in his nakedness through the perfectly clear water. Her first instinct was to blush, to turn, but then she focused her attention on him, evaluating the muscles of his chest and legs, putting aside her shame and allowing her interest in his body to become evident to him.

“Join me,” he said. “Please.”

She licked dry lips, then put off her kit, though- he noticed- she kept her dented lightsaber in arm’s reach at the lip of the pool. He turned his own unabashed interest on her as she disrobed gingerly, her body covered in thin red welts where his blade had made contact with her. She had a forensic diagram of each failed parry etched in her skin. It went beautifully with the constellation of bruises.

He did not troubled to disguise his pleasure at seeing her marked in this way, a quid pro quo for all of the injury she had caused him. It was as though his signature was burned into her flesh- and indeed, the welts were far more ragged than the one on his chest as the result of his wicked, serrated beam. 

She watched him as he watched her, and he felt her take in his predatory gaze, almost soaking it in. He beckoned to her, crooking his index finger. Slowly, she lowered herself into the water, hissing in pain when it contacted the cut on her leg, then the one at her ribs, as well as the one her right shoulder. She stood neck deep in the water, closing her eyes against the pain. Then she mastered it.

“Come here, Rey,” he said in a low voice.

“Don’t try to manipulate me,” she said.

He tilted his head. “I don’t need to. I can see the way you look at me. You want my body. You want my cock. And you want to hurt me. All of those things require coming closer.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said as she moved closer, leaving a tiny wake behind her.

“Don’t try to hide it. I can feel it.”

When she was close enough, he reached for her and drew her into his lap, facing him. She was so small, so delicate of frame, and yet she contained strength. He turned his head and kissed the burn on her shoulder, tonguing it roughly enough to make her wince.

“I supposed you’re pleased now, to have inflicted scars on me.”

“More than you know. Whenever you stand naked, you’ll remember the kiss of my blade. Whenever anyone touches you, they’ll feel my mark. You belong to me.”

“That isn’t true.”

He ignored her, and continued his ministrations, kissing the hollow at her throat, and the place between her breasts. He tasted her sweat, salty as the sea, and lapped at it where it pooled in her clavicle. He could feel the heat of the water relaxing her, the feeling of his touch as his mouth traversed the top of her buoyant breasts, finding the bruises and bite marks he’d given her the night before. He felt her crumbling resolve, her desire to give herself to him.

She kissed him, gripping his shoulder and laying her hand flat along his face. He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her closer, feeling her warm flesh through the warm water, his erection brushing casually across her inner thigh. He didn’t penetrate her, not yet. The feeling of her tongue, her mouth, her fingers in his hair were delicious enough for the moment. What he felt now was something so long gone that he thought he had erased it from his soul. He felt peaceful here with her. It was almost as though he would have been ready to give up everything to stay here with her. His empire. His dreams. The power he wielded.

It was a fantasy. He was no monk, forced to live a life of chastity in service of some Dark doctrine. He, Kylo Ren, would not compromise. He would have her and his rule both, or he would have war. Then he did penetrate her, forcing a moan from her. He toyed with the wet strands of her hair, twining them around his fingers and pulling her head back to expose her throat. He kissed her supersensitive skin, and let out a grunt of pain as he nails raked his chest, opening the burned flesh and leaving bloody streaks. Yes, she wanted to hurt him.

He craned his neck to look up at her, and showed his teeth. “Give it to me.”

She stared back down at him, the delicate bones of her face picked out by the lamp light. He could almost see a black veil falling behind those hazel, almond shaped eyes. The lamp above flickered, not the result of any breeze, nor any influence of his. He breathed in as she leaned back, her interior muscles closing around his cock. The shadow fell on her as she moved out of the light, and only the glimmer of her eyes was visible.

Lightning fast, she drew her arm back and slapped him so hard that his head snapped to the side, and he tasted blood. Stunned, he turned to look back at her, one eyebrow arched. Before he could anticipate her, she struck him again, this time giving him the back of her hand. Her sharp little knuckles caught him on the cheekbone, and he could feel the tiny fracture in the bone as he turned his gaze back to her.

The face that looked back at him was tilted to the side, lips parted, eyes inquisitive and empty of tenderness or regard. He watched her, and watched her, and when he felt the frisson run through her, he seized her by the throat and turned her head away. The water splashed around them as they struggled. Kylo Ren got his feet under him first, and used his arms to force her around. She braced her palms on the edge of the pool, trying to twist away, but he caught her hair and wound it around his fist.

He pressed his body down on hers, using his weight to force her front against the smooth rock. Water surged up over the lip and splashed across the stone, making it slippery and foiling her efforts to find a handhold. He put his foot between her feet and shoved them apart. When entered her, her cry was strangled, echoing against the walls.

He pinned her down, and fucked her with slow, forceful deliberation. She was well caught, but she struggled in any case, wriggling as she tried to free herself of his grip. He used her hair to pull her up, making her arch her back. His other hand cupped one her breasts, gently in contrast to his violence. He kissed her just under the ear, and then along her jawline and cheekbone.

“You hate yourself for enjoying this,” he whispered in her ear. The water churned around them as he thrust into her to the hilt, over and over in a brutally restrained pace. “You know that the darkness is in you, Rey.”

She cried out again, the high eerie sound turning into a low moan as he slid his hand down between her legs, running his finger tips around her clit. He wasn’t going to give her satisfaction yet. He was going to keep her here, suspended between her fear of him, her desire for him, her hunger for the animal simplicity of what he had to offer. He released her hair, and slid his hand over her mouth, forcing his thumb across her teeth like a bit. The sounds she made, halfway between a sob and moan, pleased him even more.

“Your mind is an open book to me now. When we’ve fought, when you cut me today, when you cut my face open, you felt more alive than you’ve ever felt. The Imperial Guard, they were just toys to you, but when you fight me you feel righteous. Pure. Ecstatic.”

Tears were falling fast from her eyes. She might have been trying to form words, but he smothered them with his hand. He fucked her, fucked her faith, fucked her loneliness, fucked her soul. He let go of her face just as she started to come, and the sound she made was desperate and inarticulate. She fell forward on to the stone, hugging it with her arms as her body heaved with sobs. He groaned as he came so hard he could feel his spine crack, letting his hands smooth over her hips, over the generous curve of her ass.

She did not move to escape him, but remained puddled on the stone. He pulled her up by one arm and turned her to face him.

“I feel it in you. I feel the conflict. I can give you peace.”

“No,” she shook her head, tears flowing fast. “I don’t want it. I’d rather die.”

He thumbed her tears away, giving her a little reassuring shake. “I know what Skywalker said to you. I know what he saw. I know he saw the darkness and he made you afraid of your own power.”

“I am not like you!” she screamed into his face. He pulled her in and kissed her mouth. She fought for an instant, then her spine sag and she leaned into him, limp body falling into his arms. He kissed her harder, his tongue finding the way inside of her mouth, blood from his split lip smearing on to her chin.

_I will never deny you. I will never suppress you. I will never make you feel unwanted or cast you out, or reject you or force you to diminish yourself. I will never prevent you from achieving your full potential, or censure you based on some insignificant moral principle. You will never be free, except by my side._

It was a mix of truth and lies, of course. No one was free, as Kylo Ren knew well. But Rey heard him and believed him. Perhaps tomorrow, she would repent of her weakness and desire, but in this instant, broken and thirsty for affection, she let his promises inside, took comfort in them. As her breathing slowly returned to normal, her body began to relax. When the last of the anxiety left her, he could feel her distorted thoughts.

_Safe. Cared for. Protected. Loved._

“Adored,” he told her. But she had fallen asleep standing, deaf to his words.

 


	5. Storm Warnings

Rey awoke, clean and dry and alone. Her body ached from head to foot, from a combination of exercise and exceedingly rough handling. Kylo Ren's finger prints covered her body, her chin was bruised, as was her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. The lightsaber stripes were less painful than they had been the day before, and were becoming shiny. They weren’t like ordinary burns that wept and scabbed, but some molecular disruption specific to contact from the weapon. It healed cleanly.

She half remembered Kylo’s strong arms, transporting her through the air and then bearing her easily back to their little camp inside the sanctuary. She also remembered those arms encircling her, the soft breath on the back of her neck, the feeling of his forehead as it pressed against the top of her head.

She came awake fully as a bright beam of sunlight spilled through the western doorway, blinding her temporarily. She had slept the day away. She dressed as quickly as she could, moving gingerly, then set out to find him. He was cloaking his presence from her, but she was determined.

At first she wasn’t sure where to look- the island wasn’t that big, but it was full of pockets and hidden caves. She glanced down and saw a white-and-dun smear, what appeared to be the remains of a porg. The other porgs were making plenty of noise at the offense, but they were grouped to the east well away from their normal western cliff haunts. So she headed west. After a few paces, she knew where to go.

Cut into the rock all across the western cliffs were meditation stones, places where Jedi apprentices and masters would go to contemplate the mysteries of the Force. Kylo Ren was not contemplating the mysteries of the Force, but he was contemplating something. He sat on the stone, hunched over, his hands folded as in prayer, resting against his mouth.

She watched him, unobserved from a few yards. The westering sun lit him up, turning his pale skin golden. The wind tossed his dark hair about, and his brown eyes, almost amber in the direct light, were blurred with tears. The wind, she thought. She had seen him weep before, in the throne room after the massacre of the Imperial Guard, when he all but begged her to join him. She had seen him weep when he had slaughtered his own father, her hero, Han Solo. Those tears had been cold, the ecstatic tears of the fanatic.

The thought hardened her. She approached, feet crunching on the gravel path. As she got closer, she saw the result of her own rough treatment of him. His graceful right cheekbone had an ugly purple bruise, and his lower lip was split. Then of course there was the scar that ran across his face and neck from their first real fight. Her resolve wavered a little as she remembered his words.

_You felt righteous. You felt alive._

“And you still do,” he said without turning to her. “You always will. You’ll never feel anything as fine as that, Rey.”

“I choose not to believe that,” she said. “I won’t give in to you. But you knew that.”

“I wonder,” he said, turning his eyes on her. “If your battle against me culminates in your triumph and my death, will you ever sleep through the night again without longing for one more contest?”

She didn’t know, so she didn’t answer. Instead she rocked on her heels, unsure. He beckoned her closer, but she hesitated.

“It’s not what you think.”

She approached him, and followed his gaze, shielding her eyes from the sun. He was looking down into the water, which was turbulent but still clear enough to be transparent. The object of his attention was obvious- Luke Skywalker’s legendary X-Wing, at rest just below the water’s surface.

Realization dawned on her. “You want me to…”

“It’s certainly more complicated than boulders,” he said. “Rocks are geologically consistent objects with little or no internal complexity, next to machines and organic life forms.”

“Can it even fly?”

He turned to look at her, both eyebrows raised in an expression of pure disbelief. She suddenly felt like a complete fool. She had fallen so completely into the role of his student that she had forgotten that she had skills of her own.

“Bring it up intact, and dry.”

“Dry!”

“Skywalker did it fifty years ago, from Dagobah swamp.” His eyes held her, still lit from the setting sun. “You’re twice the Jedi he was.”

She pursed her lips, irritated by his hubris. In spite of that, he had given her a task, and she sorely needed one. She turned to face her objective.

It was a hundred feet or more below, but perfectly visible through the cobalt water. She examined it as best she could from that height, then reached inside herself for her own knowledge. She knew the X-Wing, knew its circuitry, its livery, its blaster arrays and its engine structure. She knew the texture of the fabric of the pilot’s seat, and the droid compartment. She imagined dark blue water moving through the machine in gentle waves, increasing with the tide.

She closed her eyes and reached out for the Force, and found it more ready and willing than ever. The insight Kylo Ren had given her made easier somehow, made it possible for her to form a picture of her goal. She could almost feel an eager presence, childlike as he had said, rushing to fulfill her desire. She felt him somewhere close behind her, but she did her best to put him out of mind and concentrate.

The sound of rushing water met her ears. She opened her eyes and saw the fighter, rising slowly but steadily from its underwater grave. Water spilled out of it, actioned by gravity, but also by her power. Spouts and torrents and waterfalls erupted from it as her will forced it out of the machine, down to every crevice, down to the individual molecules.

Rey raised her hand to catch the hovering machine, to manipulate it with finer control. She floated it easily a grassy knoll a dozen yards away, and gently brought it down to rest on its landing gear.

Her heart was pounding. Not from the effort, but from the exhilaration. A sinking feeling gripped her, and she turned to look back at him.

“This is too easy.”

Then she understood. It was because of his presence. Everything he’d said about their connection, their mutual strength, it had all been true. The ease of the task had taxed her so little that she wondered if she could move something twice that size. Three times. Ten times?

“Clearly, I haven’t had an opportunity to make a serious investigation” Kylo Ren said quietly. “But our united telekinetic power has the potential to throw throw a Star Destroyer off course, or a moon out of orbit.”

“That’s not possible,” she said, aghast.

“Join me. We can find out together.”

“It’s too much power for anyone,” she said flatly.

The sun had set. The light was gone from his eyes. They were dark as the rest of him now.

“There is,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “No such thing as too much power.”

 _You are wrong_ , she shot at him silently.

_You’ll learn._

Annoyed, she walked away from him, and went to investigate the fighter. There were places where it had rusted, but it appeared to be mostly superficial. Otherwise it was, given its age, in excellent condition. She ran her hand over the lower wing, and opened one of the utility panels on the underside, searching the fine bundle of wires for any moisture. It was bone dry. Even the fabric on the safety harness was completely dry to the touch.

As she did this, her joy was tempered by the understanding that Kylo Ren’s lesson was not the rudiments of Force telekinetica, but the extraordinary enhancement that his mere proximity offered her. She felt like a foolish child for thinking that she would be able to walk away so easily. Now that they were both wise to the connection, what would happen if they fought in earnest?

“Can you fly it?” she asked without thinking.

His expression was that of distaste. “I’ve flown it.”

Without even meaning to, she exploited his annoyance and plucked the image right from his head.

 _Pale, slender hands, greasy from some clandestine repairs. Uncle Luke was there for a visit, so father and mother had the rare distinction of being at home at the same time. They were all discussing him, and he didn’t want to hear them. They were sending him away, so it seemed like an excellent time to_ run _away._

_He pulled his hands out of the wheel-well and wiped them off on his pants. The droid was in sleep mode, but it woke, trilled and looked around at him with its robotic eye._

_“You mind your own business,” he told it._

_He climbed into the cockpit, and put his hands on the controls. He closed his eyes, felt the machine, felt the metal and wires, the fuel tanks, the deadly gun barrels. He relaxed and let it speak to him. The droid whistled in alarm, but he punched a series of buttons and bypassed it. His confidence grew, and he found the switches, flipping them on. The machine hummed around him. He pulled down the canopy and locked it in place._

_Grasping the yoke in his hands, he turned on the ignition. The engines roared to life. The droid was now shrieking, spinning its cap piece with alarm._

_“Better get used to it,” Ben said as he punched the thrusters. The X-Wing shot into the air with such force that it pinned him to the pilot’s seat. He jerked the steering yoke and the engines compensated, throwing the craft into a barrel roll._

_“YEAAAAAAH!”_

_He turned the yoke the other way and pulled up, and up, careering into the sky. He pulled back even further and performed a loop-de-loop for good measure, then aimed the nose at the dimmest, most distant star he could find._

_That little joyride had ended quickly enough. He knew as soon as the controls ripped themselves out of his grasp that Uncle Luke was using the Force to pilot the fighter. At first Ben was angry, disappointed, but by the time the struts had reached the ground, he was flush with amazement._

_“Teach me how to do that, Uncle Luke!” he said as he tumbled out of the cockpit._

_“Ben! What in the hell-”_

_“Han, please-”_

_“You could have been killed! You could have crashed! Ben, you can’t go and do things like that!”_

_“I can!” Ben shouted back. “All you want to do is send me away, because you’re scared of what I can do.”_

_“Leia, will you please explain to our son-”_

_But then Uncle Luke held up a hand- a hand-shaped machine, which cut through the outrage._

_“Your parents aren’t sending you away, Ben. You’re coming with me. I can help you learn to use your powers to help others.”_

_Ben was clean amazed. This was his reward for stealing?_

_“Not exactly,” Uncle Luke said, but he was smiling. “Come here, kid.”_

_Ben threw his arms around his uncle’s waist. “I’m sorry I stole your ship, Uncle.”_

_“Let’s call it attempted theft, and maybe go a little easier on the consequences?”_

_“Don’t go too easy on him, Luke.”_

_“Come on, Captain Solo,” Leia’s voice. “I think you better eat and go up to bed before you get any more wild ideas.”_

“GET OUT.”

His anger was so forceful that Rey lost her balance and fell hard against the bow of the fighter. Kylo Ren’s normally pale face was flushed, his eyes wide and livid.

“You loved him,” Rey said, her voice shaking. She was frightened of him, more frightened than when he’d all but forced her in the hot spring, more frightened than when he’d hunted her in the woods of the Starkiller Base.

He twitched his head to the side, like he was trying to shake off a stinging insect. “Yes. I loved him. Is that what you wanted to hear? I worshipped the ground he walked on, I grew up wanting to be him.”

“He loved you,” she said, her voice small but steady now.

“Did he?” he paced a few steps. “Snoke had spoken hardly ten words to me when my uncle, the man I admired most in the world, the man I would have died before betraying decided that I had _already_ betrayed him. He passed sentence and came to execute me without hesitation.”

“He did hesitate. He wouldn’t have done it,” she insisted. “You don’t know what was in his heart.”

“Trust broken,” he spat, ignoring her words. “Beyond repair. It isn’t until you’ve seen someone who is supposed to love and protect you raise his hand to...to…”

He choked on the words, too angry or too despairing to continue. She wanted to go to him, to comfort him and tell him that it wasn’t true. But another part, a deeper and more hateful part rose to the surface, unbidden. She tried to bite her tongue, but the thoughts came spilling out.

_I have. You’ve seen my memories, you know how I was left. And you yourself set blade to me with the intention of killing me, of cutting my body in half._

“For all that you know,” he said, his voice now the shaking one. “I _would_ have killed you and your deserter friend as you lay in the snow if your death was my intention.”

“Liar!” she snarled. “I saw it in your eyes. You wanted to defeat me.”

The wind had picked up with the coming of the dark. Kylo Ren’s dark cowl and cloak whipped around him as he stood rigid on the spot, eyes blazing. “Yes. Defeat you. Destroy you by inches if it was necessary. I did not intend-”

“I don’t care.” The wind lashed at her, almost carrying her words away. A rain drop landed on the back of her neck, and she brushed it away. “You want me to join you? You want me to give myself up to you? You’ll murder me the instant I inconvenience you.”

“I would never-”

“Han Solo loved you. Luke Skywalker loved you. You threw it away like a child throwing toys out of a cradle”

The rain went from spitting to downpour almost instantly. Thunder rumbled in the low, bottom heavy clouds.

His eyes blazed. “You are the most incontrovertibly stupid girl I have ever laid on eyes on. I offer you the galaxy and you mewl and whine about things you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“You have betrayed everyone who has ever tried to help you,” she shot back. “Even Snoke-”

“Snoke? Snoke?” his voice reached such a pitch of incredulity that he almost couldn’t get the words out. “I should have let him have you. I should have let him tear your mind apart.”

Without warning, lightning streaked down from the sky, striking a jagged stone spire a stone’s throw away from both of them. An electrical charge concussed the air, and both of them felt the sting of heat as the energy crackled the air. Rey felt a pressure like G-force against her heart, and just for an instant, it ceased to beat. She bent over, clutching her hand to her chest, but by that time it had resumed its normal pace.

She looked at Kylo Ren. He was soaked now, his hair plastered back, bent almost double from some sudden bolt of pain. It took him a moment before he'd recovered himself, and then followed her gaze to the spire. It appeared unharmed, but the wet rock was steaming slightly. He turned his eyes to the sky, blinking as raindrops bombarded his face.

Rey watched him for a moment, then turned her back on him, rubbing her chest over her heart. “I’m going in.”

 


	6. Crossed

He followed her, trailing behind her a piece as though apprehensive about getting too close. When they entered the sanctuary, Rey turned to the mosaic with its reserve of firewood, and effortlessly struck a fire in the heart of the pile. She had never done it before, but now it came to her easy as breathing. She knew she should feel some kind of guilt or reluctance, but there was no sense in trying to resist the Vinculum right now.

Kylo Ren lingered in the doorway for a moment, then sauntered in, shrugging his wet cloak off on to the floor, and moving close to the fire. He glanced at her as she unbraided her wet hair and shook it out.

“I did not expect that,” he remarked, turning his face away from her.

“The Force....”

“Manifested our combined anger far beyond...well.”

“Well,” she agreed, sitting with her feet before her. She was cold, but she didn’t want to get close to him.

“You’re cold,” he said, and moved closer to her.

She made as if to shy away, but he looked at her sternly. She looked up at him as he stripped down to his breeches and sat behind her, legs on either side of hers. She sat stiff and annoyed for a moment, and then relaxed back into him and allowed him to hold her. With the gentlest nudge, he moved the furs from across the room and wrapped them around them both.

“I don’t know the future,” he began.  
  
“We fight,” she said dully. “One of us dies. Maybe both. My friends, your soldiers, anyone caught in the sphere of this...death.”

His mouth was soft against her ear. “It doesn’t have to be. We could spare them, us, all of that.”

She looked over shoulder at him. “If I do what you want, you will make me into a killer.”

“You would make me into a captive. A penitent, never a partner.”

“There it is,” she said, sadness rising inside her.

Outside, the winds died, but the rains thickened, pouring straight down. Like tears.

The effort of the confrontation had drained her. When he lifted her damp clothing off her body, she didn’t resist or make an active effort to assist. When he kissed her neck, palmed her breasts, she was too weary to do anything but soak in his touch. She rolled on to her side, feeling a twist of pleasure as he pushed himself into her without prelude. His hips undulated slowly against her ass as he slid his cock into her at a leisurely pace.

“I felt it when your heart stopped earlier,” he said to her. “It almost killed me.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She took his hand and put it over her heart. It beat at its customary rate under his fingers. She felt him breathing into her hair, and wondered how many heartbeats, how many breaths remained to them. If they didn’t prevail over each other, the Force might end them both.

“Rey.”

“Don’t.”

“What do I do?" he whispered into her ear. "How do I go on knowing that the last thing I want to do is harm you, but that I dare not let you oppose me?”

“Talking about it won’t change it.”

“I would give anything-”

“Kylo, please-”

But she knew. She knew it as much as she knew that he was right, that he felt right inside her. There was a sudden ripple in his body, and he groaned with release. She thought she might be too tired to reach orgasm, but he was equal to that. It was no effort for him at all to draw on the Force, to send that energy into her body. Tears sprung to her eyes as she came, and when that empty moment took her, he pushed her hair back and kissed the corner of her eye, sipping away her tears.

“My poor little Jedi.”

She was asleep long before he entered her again, and dead to his laments.


	7. Venom

Kylo Ren dreamed. He dreamed he was back in the X-Wing, excited by the feel of its rumble as the engines began to fire. The pull of gravity, the light of the moon as it spilled over the dash. His hands, slender but calloused, curled over the yoke

Over the yoke. He again turned the nose towards the most distant star, but something was wrong. Light spilled in from the aft canopy pane. Dawn.

He jerked awake, realizing the true significance of the vision. His arms were empty. Rey had gone, taken the X-Wing. He could feel her still, her determination as she piloted the craft upwards into the heavens. The pain in his chest was sudden and intense, as though his heart had been speared by a great hook and now it was pulling, tearing him open. Unbidden, tears filled his eyes and he cried out, curling around himself as the pain ripped him open. He pressed his face into the stone floor, unable to do much more than whimper rhythmically. Blood dripped from his nose, the result of a minor hemorrhage somewhere in his skull.

He reached out to her, a silent entreaty to return, to put an end to this pain. To kill him if that’s what it took. It was still possible to find her as he had done before, but she might as well be a ghost in the ether now. He closed his eyes tightly, panting with the effort. Then, his mind caught her. She was in orbit, drifting, unable to fly the craft and fight off the pain at the same time. He saw her clearly, her feet wedged and her back pressed against the pilot’s seat. Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the trickle of blood that ran down her from her nose. She was rocking, slamming herself against the seat as she screamed. As the ship fell through the planet’s orbit, the Upsilon, his own ship, became visible.

Then, it stopped. Everything stopped. The searing, ripping pain subsided into a dull throb.

A trilling noise from across the room. His communicator crackled to life. “Hailing Lord Ren. We have a contact, an X-Wing with rebel livery. Enage?”

She saw it, hovering above the night-day line. Her heart was pounding, but it no longer felt as though it would burst in her chest. She grasped the yoke and jerked it around, swinging the nose around to point directly at the Upsilon. And she hesitated.

“Sir! Permission to engage! Rogue ship is preparing to fire on our position!”

Kylo Ren’s eyes snapped open. The communicator flew to his hand, and he depressed the call button. The physical pain that had been localized in his chest now spread to the rest of him, finding ever nerve, every blood vessel, transforming itself into a stinging, purifying rage.

“FIRE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE. OBLITERATE THAT SHIP.”

\--

Rey clung to the yoke, trying to catch her breath. She had survived the pain of separating from Kylo Ren, but it was a near thing. Then she saw the ship, a dark outline against the darkness of space, but for the red bridge windows. She saw the thrusters deploy, turning the massive birdlike shape to face her.

She felt the surge of hate rising up through her like black bile, only it wasn’t her hatred. She herself felt nothing but sadness, and now, as the seconds passed and the twin heavy laser canon barrels were brought to bear on her position, she felt fear as well.

The Upsilon canons glowed as they primed, and then unleashed a fusillade of deadly red laser fire. The paralysis inside her shattered. She pulled the yoke down and punched the engines, sending the nose careening upwards. The Upsilon was not fast enough to outmaneuver her, and had maybe two thirds of her speed. A ship like that couldn’t beat an X-Wing in a fair contest on a good day. Clumsily, it wheeled to turn its cannons on her, but she was already past its field of fire. She remained there for an instant, watching the ship, watching the night and day line as it drifted over the place where she thought the island was.

Then she turned her eyes away, punched the accelerator and threw herself and her ship into hyperspace.

 


End file.
